Summary

After the impressive emergence of Mardu Ballista (or really the evolution of Mardu Vehicles into a more midrange-aggro deck), the question of how to compete with the three-colored deck has been on the minds of every Standard player. Usually, the saying that “if you can’t beat them, join them” comes with one add-on in Magic. It really reads, “if you can’t beat them, join them, and do what they’re doing better.” Since Mardu has turned to a less-aggressive strategy that is built to take advantage of planeswalkers, logically competing with them better on their new axis is a recipe for success, and that’s exactly what this Mardu Planeswalkers deck aims to do.

Alongside the usual suspects in Chandra, Torch of Defiance and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, this deck adds the powerful Sorin, Grim Nemesis to the mix. Sorin offers twists on the classic high-cost planeswalker abilities of adding loyalty to draw a card and removing loyalty to destroy a creature. For Sorin, he can draw you cards while kill the opponent and can kill creatures while single-handedly gaining you enough life to stabilize. Additionally, the one copy of Archangel Avacyn and two in the sideboard allows the deck to go bigger than it’s Mardu Ballista cousin. Both Oath of Chandra and Oath of Liliana have seen an uptick in play recently, and including a total 6 in the mainboard lets the deck stay lean and take advantage of planeswalker synergies.

3 copies of Renegade Map is certainly something that certainly stands out. Despite being called by multiple people as “the best common in Aether Revolt,” Renegade Map has never been considered a constructed-playable card. However, it has a few important applications in this deck. Firstly, it helps in hitting land drops, as the deck only has 24 lands and wants to cast 6 mana spells. It also triggers Fatal Push in a pinch. Triggering the powerful 1-mana instant is frequently a big to-do in Standard, but this deck struggles much less in that regard.